[4] It lists similar examples from the 19th and 20th centuries by William Delisle Hay, Alfred Döblin (Berge Meere und Giganten, 1924 ), André Maurois, and Olaf Stapledon (Last and First Men, 1930, and Star Maker, 1937).
Some of these purported to be excerpts of a history book from the future, having no personal protagonists but rather describing the development of nations and societies over decades and centuries.
Other related classic works include: The first science fiction writer to create a future history may have been Neil R. Jones in his stories of the 1930s.
Related to the first, some stories are set in the very remote future and only deal with the author's contemporary history in a sketchy fashion, if at all (e.g. the original Foundation Trilogy by Asimov).
Another related case is where stories are set in the near future, but with an explicitly allohistorical past, as in Ken MacLeod's Engines of Light series.
For example, Poul Anderson started The Psychotechnic League history in the early 1950s, assuming a nuclear war in 1958—then a future date.